Is it possible to download a YouTube or similar file to my computer?

Yes. One program that does this is TubeSock. It works on Mac and Windows, and creates a file you can keep for offline viewing on your computer. It creates the necessary formats for use on your iPhone or iPod, your Sony PSP or Palm Treo. The program works not only with videos on YouTube, but with those on some other sites. It’s available at stinkbot.com/Tubesock/, for $15. But while the makers of TubeSock believe their product is legal, as long as videos aren’t used for commercial distribution, Google (which owns YouTube) may not agree. A quick scan of YouTube’s terms of service reveals that the company sees most of its videos as intended solely for online streaming.

I have this thumb drive which I used to copy of the info from my old computer. I want to transfer all these files to my new computer. I want to transfer my 2007 Microsoft Outlook contacts and emails, and the My Documents folder. When I insert the drive into my new computer everything pops up, but how do I get it to transfer to the hard disk?

Your computer sees the portable drive just as it would an internal drive or folder, so you would just drag the folder or file icons from the portable drive into the folders of your choice on the hard disk. It’s just like copying folders and files from different places on your internal hard disk. Then, you can remove the portable drive, and the files and folders will be on your new computer. For the Outlook files, there’s one extra step, if you want them to actually appear in Outlook. You will have to use Outlook’s import function, found on the File menu, to incorporate them into Outlook’s own Mail and Contacts section.

Does the My Book World Edition networked hard disk you reviewed last week work with Apple’s built-in Time Machine backup software?

No. Western Digital, which makes the My Book, said it doesn’t, and, in my tests, Time Machine didn’t recognize the My Book as a possible backup drive. That’s one reason the company supplies its own backup software for the Mac, as well as for Windows. It’s likely that there is, or will be, some technical workaround, but, out of the box, this drive doesn’t work with Time Machine.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

I need some help sending videos to others. It seems that every video I try to send in various ways is always too large. I’ve tried to use a program that works with Outlook to compress the email attachment, but it’s always still too large. Is there a solution other than uploading them onto YouTube or something similar?

I suggest you try one of the services that specifically exist to transmit files that are too large for email. They typically work by having you upload the files to their servers, which, unlike YouTube, don’t expose them to the world. Seconds after you upload these files, your recipients receive an email that includes a specific link to the file you uploaded. The email is small because it includes only the link, not the file itself. The recipient clicks on the link, and the file is downloaded to his or her computer.

The service I use for this is called YouSendIt, and can be accessed at yousendit.com. It works in all the major Web browsers, and on both Windows and Macintosh computers. The company has a free plan that covers files of up to 100 megabytes in size, and allows each file to be downloaded up to 100 times, or up to a gigabyte of total downloads each month. For $10 a month, you get a maximum file size of two gigabytes, 500 downloads per file, and a monthly maximum limit of 40 gigabytes.

In my experience, YouSendIt works well. It can be used directly from within a browser, or via a small program called YouSendIt Express, that lives on your computer and handles large files faster than the browser version does. YouSendIt also offers an Outlook plug-in that can automatically route large downloads via the service rather than through regular email, though I haven’t tested this plug-in.

Our daughter is heading off to college this fall. She will be an art/graphic-design major, and the school recommended that she buy an Apple MacBook. I’m not sure if she should get what the college calls the “midlevel MacBook” or the “advanced MacBook.” The only differences are a slightly faster processor, a hard disk that is 40 gigabytes larger, and a “SuperDrive” for CDs and DVDs rather than a “Combo” drive. The price difference is $90. Which should we buy?

Either machine would be fine, and a lot depends on your budget, since college itself is of course very expensive. But I think, in this case, the extra $90 would be worth paying. This has nothing to do with the processor speed, which she probably wouldn’t even notice. But, if she is going to be creating a lot of graphics files, which can be large, the extra hard-disk space could be important.

The same goes for the CD/DVD drive options. The “SuperDrive” is Apple’s term for a drive that can create both DVDs and CDs, while the “Combo” drive can create only CDs. (Both drives can play both types of disks.) For someone who is producing large files, the ability to create DVDs can be handy, since DVDs have much higher capacities than CDs.

My laptop has been infected by rogue viruses, posing as antispyware programs, that I can’t get rid of. When I go on Google, I find a number of sites that claim to offer free software that will get rid of them, but I am reluctant to download anything onto my machine from a source that I am not sure of. What’s a reliable program that will do that job?

I would immediately buy a genuine, legitimate commercial antispyware program, install it and run it. The best ones I know of are Spyware Doctor by PC Tools, at pctools.com, and Spy Sweeper from Webroot, at Webroot.com. Each costs $30, but that price can save you a lot of heartache.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Has anyone come up with a method that allows people to take pictures with a regular digital camera and then download them wirelessly to a computer, and/or perhaps to the Internet?

There have been a few digital cameras with built-in Wi-Fi wireless capability, but the best and simplest method I know is a $100 product called Eye-Fi. This tiny gadget looks and works like a regular, garden-variety SD memory card, but it packs a Wi-Fi transmitter inside. It fits into a standard SD memory-card slot and is compatible with a wide range of camera models from Canon (CAJ), Kodak (EK), Nikon (NINOF.PK) and others.

Coupled with clever software, and a clever Web site, the Eye-Fi card automatically zips your pictures wirelessly to your PC or Mac, and/or to your choice of over 20 online photo-sharing services.

For more information, see www.eye.fi. For a list of compatible cameras, see support.eye.fi/compatibility/. For a full review of the product, see: solution.allthingsd.com/20071121/.

You mentioned last week that SugarSync might be a good solution for backups, so if one computer dies your files still exist on another system. But what if the doomed computer doesn’t actually die but its files are corrupted by malicious software? Do those newly corrupted files overwrite the good copies on your SugarSync network?

They could do so, depending on which folders you had chosen to replicate on your other computers. Automatic-synchronization services like SugarSync have a tough time telling whether changes to a file are deliberate, accidental or the result of some sort of corruption. Though the last is rare, it could look to SugarSync like you had changed the file on purpose.

One way to guard against that is for a service to offer “versioning” — the practice of maintaining multiple past copies of a file. That way, if a change isn’t intentional, you can go back to the prior, pristine version. Sharpcast, the company that makes SugarSync, says it is planning to add versioning to the service, but offers no specific date. In the meantime, one way to back up a file without fear of its being overwritten by a corrupted version is to upload it to SugarSync’s special “Web Archive” folder, whose contents are never automatically updated.

Have you ever reviewed and suggested a media player for connecting to a home theater to play all songs, videos and photos that exist on your home computers?

Yes, I have reviewed several over the years. The one I find simplest and best designed is Apple TV, which, despite its name, can work fine in a household with no other Apple (AAPL) hardware. It costs $229 and is a small, thin, unobtrusive box that fetches music, photos and videos from your home network using either a wired or a wireless connection. It can connect to your TV set or home theater via a variety of analog and digital ports, including component-video, HDMI, and optical and analog audio. It supports high-definition video and works with any computer, Windows or Mac, that has Apple’s free iTunes software installed and running.

Apple TV handles many standard photo, music and video formats, but it is limited to music and video files that iTunes can handle. That excludes copy-protected files in Microsoft’s formats, and certain open Microsoft formats, but includes common files like MP3s. Apple TV also allows you to access YouTube and to purchase music and TV shows from Apple, and rent movies from Apple, without the use of a computer.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.